Introducing the IT Professional

I would be remiss to go this far talking about systems administration within IT if I did not step back for a moment and talk about the role of the IT professional in the broader sense, as well. It's all too easy to assume that you've picked up this book because you are an experienced IT professional looking to hone their craft, tweak their skills, or maybe make some adjustments to get yourself into the Linux Administration path and probably many of you are doing just that. But some of you might be new to the field and wondering if Linux Administration specifically, or systems administration more generally, are the area in which you are wanting to focus your attentions.

First, I have to say, that after well more than thirty years in the field very little else is as generally rewarding as working in IT. IT isn't just an enormous field with countless opportunities, but it is one that gives you geographic opportunity, the chance to explore any business market (finance, manufacturing, insurance, healthcare, veterinary, hospitality, research, government, military, journalist, media, software, tourism, marketing, and so on), and myriad different roles within the field. Everyone's IT journey is a unique one, and the chances for your career to be rewarding and exciting are higher than in nearly any other field. IT is uniquely positioned as not only a technical field, but also as a customer service field, but most importantly as a core business function. IT builds and maintains the business infrastructure. As such we are a key player in every aspect of the internals of an individual business, even before we consider the fact that we work in all businesses!

As we alluded to previously, system administrators are, in some ways, the IT of IT, the most core and broadly reaching role within the IT department acting much like a meta-IT role often combining or connecting all of the other roles.

One area of IT, though, that I think is worth special mention is the topic of the general titles of Information Technology and IT Professional. Let's look at both closely:

• First, Information Technology. Certainly, this is what IT stands for, but truly IT is not about technology. It's about the information, communication, storage, security, and the efficiency of the business - the infrastructure of the business. As such, technology naturally is assumed, but sometimes IT can be about whiteboards, notepads, and just bringing good decision making and common sense to the organization. I often compare IT to legal and accounting departments: each has a focus, but each also is just part of the business itself.
• Second, we call ourselves professionals because, well to be honest, because it sounds great. Everyone wants to be called a professional. This aligns us with doctors, lawyers, civil engineers, and so forth. But the truth is, none of those are good analogues to what we do in IT. All those fields start with stringent certifications, follow exacting rules, and would be just following the script if their approaches were applied in IT. There is a reason that IT certifications are almost exclusively about products rather than roles, and that is because the concept of certifying someone for an IT role conceptually doesn't really make sense. Why is that?

IT roles cannot really be certified in a meaningful way because if you could codify IT, you could automate IT, but you can't. IT is primarily creative and works as a business function more like the CEO than to any other department. IT's job is to maximize the profits of the business through improvements and good decision making in business infrastructure, which is an extremely broad mandate. The CEO has the same mandate, just without the limitation of being focused on the infrastructure. You would never certify someone as a CEO Professional, that's crazy. CEOs are totally creative, wild, unique. IT is the same way or should be. We would never accept a CEO that just did what everyone else did, there would be no value to them. Business professionals like the CEO or the IT department are there to take massive amounts of information and training; add common sense, experience, and creativity; and then apply all of that to a unique business in relationship to its customers, market, regulations, and competition. Almost nothing in these roles is repeatable on a large scale.

At the end of the day, the IT department, whether just one person or one hundred thousand people, has the singular function of helping the company to maximize profits. To do that we have to understand the business inside and out, business as a general concept, technology, decision making, risk and reward, and so on. You can't make those kinds of business decisions, take those kinds of profit risks, if you are tied to the confines associated with professionals.

A doctor, as a prime example, has so many strict rules to follow and everything centers around their certification process and their overall focus is all about avoiding mistakes. A doctor will prioritize any number of lives lost through inaction over being the direct cause of a death themselves. The professional approach is to avoid mistakes at the tactical level, while eschewing the strategic level.

IT, like any business function, is the opposite. We must look at the overall risk assessment, calculate potential reward, and make decisions that, mathematically, make sense for business profits. As IT professionals, it's not just okay to risk losing a patient from time to time, but if we never lose one, chances are pretty good that we are too risk averse to make good decisions. IT should never be about avoiding failure at all costs (or even just at irrational costs), but about choosing the level of risk that is dictated as wise based on the math and logic of the situation. For this reason, I often refer to those in our field as IT Practitioners because this better reflects the proper mindset that we should have when properly representing our field in a company that takes the role of the IT department seriously (and, by extension, takes itself seriously.)

The fallacy of success at any cost

Something that I have heard from businesses, which should instantly have set off alarms in the minds of every executive and manager there, is concepts like we cannot have server downtime at any cost. This comes up from the normal course of risk assessment and discovery. System engineers ask what the value of a system is so that they can gauge the needs of risk mitigation only to be told something like downtime is not an option or we have to be up one hundred percent of the time, at any cost.

Of course, if we really take time to think about it, we know that they are just avoiding the question by stating something absurd. We are left with nothing to work with, no way to know how to approach system design. No system has zero chance of failure, that is not possible. Saying that we must protect against all possible failures at any cost means that to even attempt to fulfill that demand that we just consume literally all resources that the organization can provide purely for risk mitigation. Any IT department attempting to follow that directive with any sincerity would bankrupt the firm. It should be obvious that no workload, in any scenario, is worth that. Yet, it is surprisingly often that company management expects IT to work with little other direction in determining which workloads get what degree of protection.

Knowing business, finance, and ITs place in the business are necessary when IT has to force the business to act rationally and effectively.

Don't be surprised to find that in your role as an IT practitioner, especially one in system administration, that you will be playing an instrumental role in guiding and advising the company in many different business capacities. While we would hope that other roles, such as CEO and CFO were more broadly trained in business practices, the harsh reality of business is that it is far easier to become one of those roles with little or no training than to be an effective system administrator without that business training. IT roles at a decision making or influence level require so much business knowledge and practical business thinking to do the job in with any semblance of success that often we must act as advisors to every level of the business as often there is little business experience elsewhere in the organization.